DRUSILLA (Δροσώλια). - Third daughter of Herod Agrippa I, sister of Agrippa II, of Berenice and of Mariamme.
She was 6 years old at the death of her father (44 A.D.), by whom she had been betrothed, about a year earlier, to Epiphanes, son of Antiochus IV of Commagene, on his promise to convert to Judaism. But Epiphanes was afterwards unwilling to submit to circumcision, and the marriage did not take place. Aziz, king of Emesa, did submit to it instead, and D. became his wife at about the age of 15 (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud. XIX, 9, 1; XX, 7, 1). Two years later, however, she yielded to the blandishments of the procurator Felix, who, enamored of her extraordinary beauty, made her his wife, with the complicity of a magician from Cyprus, a Jew named Simon (or Atomos: a variant in Antiq. Iud., XX, 7, 2). By Felix, D. had a son, who perished either with her or with his own wife (Flavius' expression is ambiguous) in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. (Antiq. Iud., XX, 7, 2). D., who, like other aristocratic Jewish women of the time, made a show of interest in religious questions, appears at Felix's side, in an almost confidential meeting with Paul during the imprisonment at Caesarea (Act. 24, 24 ff.). The Apostle spoke "of justice, of continence and of the future judgment," thus striking Felix to the quick. Since Suetonius (Claudius, 28) calls Felix "husband of three queens," and, on the other hand, Tacitus (Hist., V, 9) says that D., wife of Felix, was a granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, it has been thought that the procurator had two D.s as wives. Probably it is merely an inaccuracy of Tacitus,
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Teodorico da Castel San Pietro